Sirens
by SawyerRaleigh
Summary: A few short snippets exploring Yuuto's relationship with water and his reluctance to take advantage of his particular abilities with it.
1. Puddle

_It's probably accurate to say that I have never especially cared about anything other than myself._

I discovered my abilities with water at a pretty young age. I was jumping in puddles on my way home from school one rainy day, doing what little kids do best when left to their own devices around anything that can get them dirty. I was having more fun than I had had on my birthday, making sure every last inch of me was drenched, when I saw _it_. Right in the middle of a busy intersection there was a dip in the road that had filled with the most gloriously inviting puddle I had ever seen. The streetlights glistening in its rain-speckled surface like fairies, begging me to join them and I could already feel the promise of a satisfying splash as large as a tidal wave swelling beneath my mackerel-patterned galoshes.

Luckily my mother had been on her way to meet me and grabbed the back of my raincoat just in time to keep me from being flattened by a semi. As for the disappointment that swept over me, well to a five-year-old it was practically the end of the world and no, the irony is not lost on me now. I was so dejected the entire walk home that I didn't splash in a single other puddle, angrily sulking and glaring at my mother's back all the while ranting in my head about the injustice of it all, that I would be so easily separated from that pinnacle of puddle-jumping, that I had been denied my Everest.

It was several blocks before I began to notice people whispering to one another and double-taking in my direction. At first I self-consciously thought that I had mud on my face, or just looked strange somehow. Perhaps it was even the pink galoshes that people found gossip-worthy. Certainly, I had been teased for them before. At last I realized that it was not me at all that was drawing all of this incredulous attention, but something behind me so I paused and turned around, fully expecting to see some sort of interesting monster, or at least an elephant trotting along home with us.

There, just hovering in the air behind me like some sort of child-size UFO, was a enormous glob of water. I will never forget the way the streetlights shone in it, catching the residual oil streaks and casting gossamer rainbows upon its surface. A drowned cricket floated in its midst, swept along for the ride alongside a few stray leaves. A straw wrapper and what appeared to be part of a ripped pamphlet for an alcoholic therapy group drifted by, adding a little color to the debris. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

"Mama." I breathed in wonder and my mother turned on her over-priced heels with a snap.

"Wha-" The annoyance died on her perfectly lined lips as she too caught sight of the glorious creature.

A ray of inspiration struck me then. "Can I keep it?"

"Keep it?" My mother choked. "What _is_ it?"

"The puddle, silly!" She really could be quite dense sometimes.

"The puddle." She repeated faintly.

"Yeah! It wants to come home with us!"

"Is that so?"

The puddle sidled closer and gave my cheek a sloppy wet nudge and even as I giggled, in no obvious harm whatsoever, my mother snatched the back of my raincoat and dragged me away. In response, the puddle burbled angrily at her, only causing me to laugh more.

Alarmed, my mother snatched me up and backed away slowly. "Shoo." She waved one perfectly manicured hand at it. "Go away."

"But Mama it just wants to play."

"_Play?_" Her voice stretched thin in near hysteria.

"Yeah, so can it come home with us?"

"Absolutely not! I don't want it anywhere near you, whatever it is!"

A few passersby had paused to watch the spectacle, discretely peeking over newspapers or peering out of the corner of their eyes as they knelt to tie already secured laces.

"Ma'am, do you need some help?"

I looked up at the sound of the police officer's voice and there was a faint popping sound and a half-hearted splash like a fountain running out of water or a hose being shut off. He looked startled by my cry of dismay.

"No officer, there was just a- a stray dog following us. It's gone now."

"Did you see where it went?"

"No, I'm sorry." My mother bowed as I stared sadly at the shine of lampposts on the wet concrete. "Thank you for your concern."

As soon as the man turned away to search for the imaginary dog, my mother snatched my arm and wordlessly we returned home.


	2. Aquarium

I was afraid of the ocean, can you believe that?

We went to the aquarium once as a class trip, I think it was first grade. I was utterly thrilled when we first walked through the doors. I had heard all about the new dolphin exhibit and thought that this was going to be the best trip ever.

At first it was. A girl from another class slipped getting onto the bus and I was lucky enough to be standing behind her so I got the best view of her Hello Kitty panties. It was my first glimpse of what might lie beneath girls' uniform skirts and I was instantly aware that I did not want it to be my last. I made sure to sit next to her on the bus, ignoring the warnings from other boys about cooties. I was more than willing to take my chances.

Things were already headed downhill though once we arrived at the aquarium and the girl with the Hello Kitty panties was put into the red group and I into the blue. It was sad, but at least there were other girls in my group whose panties I could happily, if not very realistically, imagine.

We began with the most boring part of the tour. We all gathered in a semicircle around a guide who lectured us on how there are over 27,000 species of fish in the ocean and we're discovering new ones every year. It was strange to realize that even grown-ups didn't know what all was down there.

As a reward for our patience with the lecture, the guide then announced that we were going to start the tour off with what she considered the most exciting part of the exhibit: a tunnel through which we could walk that lead _through_ a particularly large tank so that we would be surrounded on all sides but the floor by the sea life we had just been discussing. According to the guide, it would be a bit like actually being in the ocean but without getting wet and we first-graders were appropriately awed by the notion.

She opened a pair of heavy-looking double doors and motioned us into the tunnel room. Before I even set food over the threshold, I knew something felt wrong. It was the light that first set me off I think. The room was lit with a faintly greenish glow. Water wasn't supposed to be green, it was blue. It wasn't that I had anything against the color, it was just the wrongness of it that set me on edge and my childish wonder and excitement tensed, not yet gone but ready to bolt. Of course, what was there to do but remain with the group and enter the tunnel anyway?

I remember the "whoa"s and the "look at that!"s that ensued as my fellow classmates pressed their faces against the glass or stared open mouthed at the ceiling and I remember standing shock still in the middle of the floor, as far away from all sides as I could get and how weirdly I felt like I couldn't breathe and yet was breathing too much all at once. I wondered if this was how it felt to drown.

"Kigai-kun?" Our teacher paused beside me. She must have been surprised to see my hesitation after I had spent the whole week writing my daily writing exercises about how I couldn't wait for this trip. Maybe she thought I was just overwhelmed with joy and that's why she gently nudged me closer to one wall.

I stared at my own wide-eyed reflection in the glass, trying to concentrate on it instead of the… things that were going about their business on the other side. There were just so _many_ creatures occupying the water, didn't they ever get claustrophobic having to share their limited space like that? I asked the teacher and she laughed, pointing out that the Earth is three-quarters water and that they have even more space than we do on land. That didn't help. Instead my skin began to feel clammy like it did when I was sick. I wanted to go home and climb into my nice, dry bed, and be all alone and far away from these strange, alien creatures that had no business taking up most of the planet, hiding in places that even adults couldn't always find.

"Oh look, a shark!" The teacher remarked with perverse glee and tugged me a few feet over to where indeed, a tiger shark was gliding lazily by. I don't know if it really could see me through the glass or not, but at the time, I thought our eyes met. There was something so anciently primal about it, about the way its mouth was just a slit, just an opening in its head without anything so refined as lips to soften its blatant purpose. Just as I was thinking how much I hated that line, it parted momentarily, revealing rows of jagged teeth like miniature peaks and I could all too readily envision those teeth tearing into flesh.

I would not scream, I told myself, but the utter terror found a way to express itself anyway and it was of course only a matter of seconds before a classmate noticed that I had wet myself and loudly pointed it out to the entire room. The teacher hurried me out, though not before the embarrassment could sink in with the warmth. I spent the rest of the trip trying to dry my pants with a blow dryer in the bathroom and then sitting on a bench out front, still shaken by what I had seen inside.

On the bus on the way back I was naturally teased as the scardy cat and big baby that I fully believed I was as well but I would not cry. Crying would only make it worse, I knew, I just didn't know how to fix it yet, until one bully in particular came up with the nickname that only a group of six-year old children could find clever of "piss-fish". When the other kids laughed, I laughed too, and somehow that made it okay. You don't realize how crowded somewhere is, when you're participating in the crowd. It's no wonder we call them schools of fish.

I learned a lot that day.


End file.
